It’s hard to imagine, but each year I become less and less
prepared for it, which is why I’ve been lobbying for bi-yearly holidays for
bi-decades now.

But I can’t seem to gain much traction on that proposal,

I think mostly because people don’t understand what
bi-anything refers to.

I think most people assume that when you attach bi- to any
word it somehow connotes something having to do with sexual orientation…or a
two wheel, self-propelled vehicle...and sexual orientation.

So it’s been an uphill climb.

Bicycle or not.

Having said that, however, you probably know I’m not one to be easily
discouraged (is that laughter I hear?) so I’ve decided to take a new tact.

If we can’t go bi- with the holiday season, why don’t we just
go the other way and extend it…for about 3 months into the new year.

This way we can ease into the holidays rather than having it
all dumped on us, right after Halloween.

Keep Halloween where it is…unless of course there’s some
kind of super storm that dumps on it…in which case we can now
apparently re-schedule it to whenever…but move Thanksgiving back a half month or
even a whole month.

Then we can re-schedule Christmas, Hanukah and all the other
festival of lights for sometime around mid-February.

Okay…sure…that means we bump Valentine’s Day back a bit too.

But come on…it’s Valentine’s Day.

You know?

Drop it into May, June…even August…will anyone even notice?

I know, I know, I know….

I’m messing with tradition…but 18th, 19th,
20th Century tradition.

If I’m not mistaken this is now the 21st Century…time to
shake up the calendar a bit.

The retailers will like it…the electric companies will like
it too… you know because of the extended holiday lighting season.

It'll even
give all the cable TV networks time to program more of their endless schmaltzy
Holiday movie fare.

Maybe even produce another couple of dozen.

More work for all those B-list former TV stars.

And by the time all the festivities wind down…it’ll be
almost spring.

Not bad, huh?

So hopefully I’ve given you something to ponder while you’re
out there hunting down the next big holiday bonanza.

Monday, November 26, 2012

It’s been a tough last couple of months around here, both communally
and personally, so when I walked out on to the back porch this morning to take
in my daily dose of sanity stabilizing, cold fresh air, I was greeted by the
most pleasant of surprises: the last rose of summer.

Not that it should have been a surprise at all; Z had
pointed it out to me, through the kitchen window, a few days before. My head
was just too full of distraction and the usual nonsense that makes up my daily
life to fully process what she was saying.

Z is always a few steps ahead of most people when it comes
to picking out these little gifts of nature, so, needless to say, Z is always miles
ahead of me.

But there it stood, on this cold November, post-Thanksgiving
morning, standing straight and tall; solitary, but proud.

While all its floral peers had long succumbed to frozen nights
and early snow, this fair weather holdout managed to hunker down, wait its turn
and blossom at the moment when it was most needed.

Sure, there were more impressive blooms throughout the
season; bunches upon bunches brightening up the garden.

But none, as welcome and appreciated as this single rose,
the last of a summer now long since passed.

It knew its season.

A season of one.

And amid the cold, dark world of inevitable winter still to
come, we’re all the brighter for it…today, much more than yesterday.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Every now and then, while digging through the attic for my
long lost pet rock collection, I come across an old Thanksgiving photo from the
60’s.

It’s often a group shot of my extended family sitting around
a festive holiday table filled with food or, more likely, the remnants of food.

All familiar faces, minus the shadows of time; many now
gone, but all still remembered.

These black and white road maps to my past are now the treasures
of my present; opening doors to earlier days of innocence, wrapped in joy,
sprinkled with pain…now embossed with smiles, knowing resolution always
lingered just around the corner.

Little did we know, back then, when whoever grabbed that old
Brownie Instamatic or Polaroid Swinger that we were actually staring into the
future? That we were destined to be a
moment frozen for all time; a moment left for future generations to ponder…or
toss in the trash while cleaning out our attics.

That’s the funny thing about old photos.

Prize to me…clutter to someone else.

The thing is, unless you were there, that captured moment is
lacking something critical; something which can only be restored through our
imaginations.

Noise!

What’s lacking is the noise…the hub bub, the din…even the
sound of my grandfather snoring, just off the right of picture frame.

Especially the sound of my grandfather snoring, just off the
right of picture frame.

And with the clatter from the past restored in our minds, soon
follows the colors, the smells, the textures and all the rest.

The laughter from the kitchen over who spilled the gravy. The
arguments from the living room over what actually constitutes a fumble, both on
TV and the front lawn...especially the front lawn.

The sight of your uncle—or somebody’s uncle, of whom you
were never quite sure—enlisting the drumsticks as ear decorations, which he
did…every year…something he thought we wanted to see…every year.

The smell of meatball soup filling the room; too hot for
some…too cold for others...still, always anticipated and always delicious.

Cranberry, in the shape of a can, wiggling on a small plate
in the shape of a turkey, beckoning to all of us, shape notwithstanding, to be
the first to deface its jellied perfection.

Fascination, as Grandma scoops out stuffing from a turkey’s
unmentionable nether region—are we really
gonna eat that stuff—Gramps sharpening the BIG knife, all the while
hatching a plan to keep the drumsticks away from the previously mentioned big
eared mysterious uncle.

The pumpkin pie dropped, then zipped away and haphazardly
reconfigured into semi-perfect slices, enlisting the five second rule as to why
it was still mostly okay to eat…especially with cool whip…especially on
Thanksgiving.

More laughter….more arguments…more of everything, packaged
in black and white and sent off to the future.

Today, the memories come wrapped in digits of zeros and ones,
very often already filled with sound and even music embedded. Everything
future generations will ever need to peer back into an electronically flawless
past….except imagination

But, even so, as you sit at the table in this season of
runaway holiday trains, pose by the turkey or sit by the tree, staring into
your own future unknown, imagine that moment frozen in black and white, curled
at the edges, preserving a lifetime of memories for you and everyone yet to
come.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

We’re getting into that time of year now when, in the past,
people made a big thing about picking up the phone to catch up with friends and
family, near and far.

Not so much, anymore, since technologyallows folks, no matter where they are, to
keep track of each other 365 days of the year…for better or for worse.

I’ll let you decide.

Social media reigns and almost everyone, both young and old
is tied in.

No more having to pick up the phone to see what Aunt Sadie
is up to with her knitting club.

Today Aunt Sadie is updating her Facebook status from
Cancun, where she’s posting pictures of herself “knitting” on the beach with a
couple of guys named Manny and Jose.

Cell phones, or mobile phones, or smart phones, as they are
more accurately referred to these days, are everywhere and they have slowly but
surely replaced the landline phone as our primary means of communication.

Where mobile communications used to be a utility of
convenience to be found mostly on the road, grocery store, beach or in the
middle of a crowded movie theatre so you could tell your best friend who you
saw with whom on the road, grocery store or beach, I’m sure most of you now
find yourself sitting in the comfort of your living room, chatting away,
texting or pursuing the latest advancements in car deodorizers on this little techno
nugget, while your poor old corded or cordless phone is sitting forlornly to
the side adjusting to life as a paper weight.

However, the thing that bugs me about mobile phones, no
matter how smart they are, is that the sound quality is still a bit
lacking.More often than not you feel as
if you’re talking to an inhabitant of Mars.

And the thing is, over the last couple of decades, the sound
quality on landlines had just evolved to
the point that no matter where in the world your call originated, the person jabbering
in your ear sounded as if they were actually in the next room…which, granted,
depending on with whom you were speaking, could be a little creepy.

I guess you have to be of a “certain age” to appreciate that kind of acoustic advancement….especially
when it came to long distance.

Or to even know what long
distance even is.

Once, there was a time when making a long distance call had
some meaning to it.

It was momentous.

Families gathered to pass the phone around on a Sunday
evening when rates were at their lowest. They chatted up Grandma and Grandpa,
half way across the country, or you called that nice young lady you met in that
hotel bar in Wichita, years before, who gave you her number and suggested you
keep in touch, which you did, because you thought it was the polite thing to
do.

Sunday evening was also the appointed time to speak to parents
when we were away at school…and you swore you could hear the kitchen timer ticking
off the minutes in the background.

Weekday calls were off the table, even in the event of
death, even your own…however, requests for organ donation were allowed…if
absolutely necessary…and it couldn’t hold until the evening rates came into
effect.

Sure, long distance was expensive, but even so, you felt as
if you were getting your money’s worth judging by the level of hissing you
heard on the line. The more extraneous background noise the better, because it indicated
just how far your voice was traveling through a long, long maze of wire and telephone
poles in order to get to where it was going...be it across the river or across
the ocean.

Shouting into the phone, just to be heard, was often
required and if you were lucky to get one of those connections that echoed back
to you, you imagined your voice bouncing around in the middle of a prairie, scaring
off cowboys and coyotes alike.

People even bragged on their long distance calls, back
then…but not today. Today calling across the country is as common as calling down
the street for a pizza.

And whether you’re calling Hoboken or Hong Kong, everyone
sounds the same…not a hiss or a hum to be found.

Kids in college call their parents five times a day just to report a sneeze, no
matter what part of the country they find themselves.

Old friends are never more than a text message away.

Everyone’s connected by technology and phones, smart and
dumb alike…the phones I mean.

Although…..

So I guess it’s a good thing.

But it’s odd to think that younger generations will never
grasp what it was like to be disconnected.

That being friends meant more than being on a list shared
with 500 other “friends”.

When communicating actually meant interacting, beyond 140
characters slipped in among countless other bits of information and witticism on
Twitter.

When the words “long
distance calling”, stirred excitement and anticipation.

It was a rarity…and relationships were all the more special because
of it.

Okay…gotta go answer a text from that guy who sold me that
pair of sneakers a few years ago.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Like spring, it eases us into a time of extremes…extremes in
terms of weather, activities and especially the celebration of life in one form
or another…most of which include lots of food, friends and adult beverages.

Spring is known for its colorful blooms, Easter egg baskets;
breezy days spent thatching the lawn and hoeing the gardens awake.

Fall is known for its colorful foliage, pumpkin patches,
apple cider and crisp sunny days spent raking leaves and putting the gardens to
bed.

Where spring plays harmonies of anticipation, fall plays the
melody of submission.

Winter is knocking on the door.

Prepare the homestead…prepare yourself…short brittle days
and long cold nights lay ahead, in wait, in time.

Two sides of a sundial, as the sun slips around.

And while there’s still quite a bit of fall to encounter, it
seems as if, this year, we’ve been cheated of our peaceful transition.

Friday, November 9, 2012

The good news is, the people have spoken…and things are not
going to change a whole lot around here over the next four years.

The bad news is, the people have spoken…and things are not
going to change a whole lot around here over the next four years.

The other bad news is I’m sitting here writing this right
after what would have to be considered a pretty significant snowstorm, no matter what
time of winter it occurred, let alone the first full week of November.

November?

The good news is my town rescheduled Halloween, for this
Friday night—by proclamation no less.

Of course, the kids might need to wear snow shoes, but,
hey…that’s the new normal on Halloween around here, these days.

I wonder if there was an actual fanfare accompanying the
proclamation?

Retorting on Twitter

About Me

My passion these days is writing silly stories for “The
Freelance Retort”, the humor website I began in May of 2011 when the world was
supposed to come to an end. It didn’t and now I’m stuck writing these things 2
or 3 times a week.My passion before that was chocolate ice cream.

When I’m not doing this, I’m a freelance, corporate writer/director/ producer, which means—besides the many slashes—I create everything from promotional, instructional and training videos to interactive on line presentations for various corporation and health care companies. In that sense I guess you could say that I’m a “professional writer” since I do get paid to write, work from home and have lots of free time to myself. However, most of my friends and neighbors think I’m just goofing off. Naturally, being a freelance writer who deals with the sometimes insanity of the corporate world from the safety of the creative fringe, my views will more often than not be tinged with cynicism, sarcasm and a fair share of self-deprecation. I hope you enjoy them in the spirit in which they are intended….